The Charlie Kirk Show - THOUGHTCRIME Ep. 117- America First vs America Only? Luigi the Musical? Kids in Church?

00:00:03.000 My name is Charlie Kirk.

00:00:05.000 I run the largest pro-American student organization in the country fighting for the future of our republic.

00:00:11.000 My call is to fight evil and to proclaim truth.

00:00:14.000 If the most important thing for you is just feeling good, you're going to end up miserable.

00:00:19.000 But if the most important thing is doing good, you'll end up purposeful.

00:00:24.000 College is a scam, everybody.

00:00:26.000 You got to stop sending your kids to college.

00:00:27.000 You should get married as young as possible and have as many kids as possible.

00:00:31.000 Go start a Turning Point USA college chapter.

00:00:33.000 Go start a Turning Point USA high school chapter.

00:00:35.000 Go find out how your church can get involved.

00:00:37.000 Sign up and become an activist.

00:00:39.000 I gave my life to the Lord in fifth grade.

00:00:41.000 Most important decision I ever made in my life.

00:00:43.000 And I encourage you to do the same.

00:00:45.000 Here I am.

00:00:46.000 Lord, use me.

00:00:48.000 Buckle up, everybody.

00:00:49.000 Here we go.

00:00:56.000 The Charlie Kirk Show is proudly sponsored by Preserve Gold, the leading gold and silver experts and the only precious metals company I recommend to my family, friends, and viewers.

00:01:09.000 Well, ladies and gentlemen, we are back with another edition, live edition of Thursday Thought Crime.

00:01:18.000 Definitely been a little bit since we've been here on live.

00:01:22.000 Excited to be back doing this.

00:01:24.000 We've had some elections going on.

00:01:26.000 We've got a war going on.

00:01:28.000 But the thought crimes never end.

00:01:31.000 And that's what brings us back to tonight.

00:01:34.000 So let's look around the room.

00:01:35.000 Who do we have tonight?

00:01:36.000 I know.

00:01:37.000 Right now, you've just got me and Danny.

00:01:39.000 We'll allegedly have Andrew join us eventually.

00:01:42.000 We'll see.

00:01:43.000 Tyler Bowie.

00:01:44.000 I'm not sure what happened to Tyler.

00:01:46.000 I have to assume Tyler.

00:01:47.000 Whenever I can't find Tyler, I always jump to the first thing that comes to mind, which is that he's been forcibly conscripted by President Trump to go fight in the Spice Wars on a different, on a distant colony planet.

00:01:57.000 I would like to know if the Spice Must Flow.

00:02:01.000 Is that true?

00:02:01.000 The Spice has definitely got to flow.

00:02:03.000 And we all know that Tyler's really passionate about the Spice flowing.

00:02:07.000 We know that he has good relations with the President's Mentats.

00:02:12.000 We know he's got a long relationship with the Spacers Guild.

00:02:16.000 And I think between all of those things, he'll be a real asset to the Spice Wars.

00:02:19.000 Has he passed the pain box as of yet?

00:02:24.000 Man, did you ever see if he did that?

00:02:26.000 Do you know if Tyler ever passed the pain box?

00:02:28.000 I don't know what the Spice Wars.

00:02:28.000 I'm being honest with you.

00:02:29.000 You don't know what the Spice Wars or the Pain Box is.

00:02:31.000 That's going to get you conscripted to fight in the Spice Wars and not in like a cool Sardaukar regiment.

00:02:36.000 You're probably just going to be thrown into like the meat grinder.

00:02:39.000 Well, all right, sign me up then.

00:02:41.000 I mean, you are an Ohio State fan.

00:02:43.000 What is the Spice Wars?

00:02:44.000 The Spice Wars.

00:02:45.000 Benny Jesuit are very disappointed.

00:02:47.000 He doesn't know what the Spice Wars are, Jack.

00:02:49.000 Benny Jessuit are very, very disappointed.

00:02:49.000 I don't think.

00:02:51.000 We can't reveal the secrets of the Bene Jazera to Danny, and he's not aware of these things.

00:02:57.000 He is certainly not the Kwiznat Tatarach.

00:02:59.000 Yes, he's not.

00:03:00.000 Yeah, this is all foreign language.

00:03:02.000 I have no idea.

00:03:02.000 A typical Ohio State fan.

00:03:04.000 Anyway, so we'll have to just jump in here.

00:03:06.000 It has nothing to do with current events whatsoever.

00:03:10.000 Just so disappointing.

00:03:12.000 What does have something to do with current events, though, is our first topic.

00:03:16.000 Everyone knows what the biggest event of the past few weeks is and or the past, well, definitely the past week.

00:03:23.000 And it is, of course, our venture going down in Iran.

00:03:27.000 We aren't going to get into the details of whether we should have gone now, what the politics of it are.

00:03:32.000 We wanted to discuss a very specific version of this, which is the topic of what's always used with this administration, the line, America first.

00:03:42.000 And specifically, what does America first mean?

00:03:46.000 Does America first mean specifically America only, America alone, America as sole focus of all things?

00:03:56.000 Or can America first, does that imply it can be first among other things?

00:04:02.000 And there's a heady debate about that.

00:04:04.000 We were passing this clip around as we discussed what to say about this.

00:04:09.000 And I think a guy who's played a leading role in defining what America first is is, of course, the president's aide, Stephen Miller.

00:04:15.000 Let's look at what he had to say about this on just a matter of days ago, 640.

00:04:22.000 I don't think that people understand the Trump doctrine is not isolationism.

00:04:27.000 Maybe you can help set them straight because I'm not too effective, I guess.

00:04:32.000 The president has made clear that he believes America's awesome military might should be used to protect and defend America's interests.

00:04:42.000 Not to surrender the world to our adversaries, to our enemies, to those who would do us harm, not to surrender the world's resources, lanes of commerce, or capacity to keep our citizens safe.

00:04:56.000 No, America first means America will be the greatest, most unquestioned, unmatched power in the world.

00:05:04.000 So, that's kind of part of the debate is a lot of, I do feel, Jack, and maybe you agree, that maybe in kind of in the beginning of the Trump surge, 2016-2020 range, where America first was getting thrown around a lot in politics, a lot of it actually, it did, let's be frank, it had something of a isolationist streak to it or a breakaway thing, that the time for putting America first meant a time of pulling back, pulling away from a lot of international obligations.

00:05:33.000 The idea was that a lot of foreign adventures constituted putting the rest of the world first, and that putting America first meant refocusing on America.

00:05:42.000 Now, Stephen Miller's MAGRA credentials are pretty impeccable, I would say.

00:05:47.000 And he's pushing the line now that America First, it almost means a revival of Cold War levels of American dominance.

00:05:55.000 That it does mean preserving an American empire or American respect, American primacy.

00:06:03.000 And is there a conflict between those things?

00:06:05.000 Especially, I guess, does it work as long as we are maintaining border security, for example?

00:06:13.000 Yeah, the thing that trips people up there is when he said American interests.

00:06:16.000 And that's more so, like, whose interests are we talking about here?

00:06:20.000 Because that's where, especially my generation gets caught up in with what, like, Marco Rubio said the other day when we say American interest.

00:06:27.000 Is that really America First?

00:06:28.000 Are we kind of redefining the term and creating new interests within the movement that quote unquote now fall under America First?

00:06:36.000 So that's where definitely young men are pretty upset right now about that.

00:06:41.000 I am just cracking up because in the chat, someone wrote, after Blake drank all of that Strong Cell, I'm looking forward to see him coming on TPOSA with a three-foot-tall beehive hairdo.

00:06:52.000 Look, it says you need Blake for did I miss something?

00:06:56.000 Did you OD on Strong Cell?

00:06:58.000 No, I've just been, I've just been diligently drinking my Strong Cell every day, Jack.

00:07:02.000 Unlike, you know, Andrew went to D.C., he went to the State of the Union.

00:07:04.000 He didn't bring Strong Cell with him.

00:07:06.000 I think he reset the timer for all progress.

00:07:09.000 Yeah, I think he's following the rules.

00:07:12.000 And so he's lost the verve.

00:07:14.000 Whereas I think I'm about one week out.

00:07:17.000 And my expectation is that I will close my eyes one night and I shall wake up the next day with a full rich head of luscious hair.

00:07:26.000 I think it'll happen.

00:07:27.000 I believe.

00:07:28.000 But Jack, yeah, I'm going to take the question.

00:07:31.000 Not to dodge the question, although I certainly am adept at doing so.

00:07:37.000 No, look, there's no question America First was always originally deployed as an answer to the neocon sort of neoliberal policy of the day.

00:07:50.000 Keep in mind that if you go back to 2015, 2016, if you go back to that timeframe, the United States was still involved heavily in Afghanistan.

00:07:59.000 The United States still had troops in Iraq and Syria where we were fighting ISIS.

00:08:03.000 The United States was involved in all of these conflicts all around the world.

00:08:08.000 And America First meant building the wall.

00:08:11.000 It meant putting the interests of Americans first.

00:08:13.000 It meant taking the focus away from the federal government's focus away from foreign conflicts and focusing it on the American people and the American homeland.

00:08:24.000 There's no question that's what America First always meant, Americans first when it first was deployed.

00:08:30.000 So when I hear America First also being deployed is saying, well, wait, that doesn't necessarily mean that America is going to be last in the world.

00:08:40.000 I think there isn't necessarily a contradiction in terms there because you mentioned Stephen Miller because he's the guy who's been out front and center every single day defending ICE, defending Homeland Security, which obviously we saw some changeover today, defending the agents in the field and conducting whatever he can in terms of deportation operations.

00:09:03.000 So as you say, Stephen Miller is a guy who absolutely doesn't have any questionable credentials when it comes to MA or when it comes to these issues.

00:09:14.000 But at the same time, I think that the bigger debate, whether we get into a semantics debate about rhetoric, the bigger debate is should America be isolationist or should America actually care about some of these things like influence in the wider world.

00:09:30.000 And that's a debate that I've seen a lot of people get into.

00:09:33.000 I'd love to see, by the way, if people want to get into the chat that we're into right now, you know, please go ahead, send in your Rumble Rants, send in your comments.

00:09:42.000 We're looking at it because we are live.

00:09:44.000 I'm seeing your chats right there.

00:09:45.000 Right here, President, right here, Dylan Ivey says he had it in his 2017 inauguration speech.

00:09:52.000 I remember America First preserves American culture.

00:09:52.000 He said it twice.

00:09:56.000 And it certainly does.

00:09:57.000 This is a huge part of America First, American excellence.

00:10:01.000 And look, at the end of the day, when it comes to these things like the Middle East, when it comes to these things like the others, I'm certainly not someone who's a proponent of these forever wars.

00:10:11.000 I'm certainly not someone who's a proponent of all of these things.

00:10:15.000 And I don't think that Charlie was.

00:10:16.000 We obviously have seen Charlie's tweets and statements on it.

00:10:21.000 But at the same time, we don't necessarily want China and Russia just taking over the entire world, do we, Blake?

00:10:28.000 And I think what we do underrate is America did get, we looked at a lot of the negatives because those were particularly severe in the Bush years and the Obama years.

00:10:28.000 No, we don't.

00:10:38.000 The downsides of American global power is it's like, oh, it just seems to be our job to perpetually have troops in dump countries like Afghanistan.

00:10:48.000 It's perpetually our job to pony up tens of billions of dollars, practically to have nations just kind of on the dole from us.

00:10:57.000 I think that was really highlighted with the U.S. AID stuff that happened last spring where people flipped out because they learned, wait, we just spend $50 billion a year to basically be propping up programs that like no one else in the world is funding.

00:11:10.000 Like no one, supposedly it was an atrocity for us to defend USAID, but the European Union didn't replace that funding.

00:11:17.000 So I guess they didn't think it was important enough to do and so on.

00:11:21.000 But we do get benefits from being the top dog around from having a lot of countries that matter looking to us.

00:11:29.000 We look at that with the US dollar being in the position that it is.

00:11:33.000 And that if the U.S. dollar went away, I've seen people say it would be like if U.S. GDP just sort of shrunk 5% overnight because that's the value of the dollar.

00:11:42.000 Or the fact that us being so central to the defense of a lot of countries, that did enable President Trump to use a lot of his tariff leverage on them.

00:11:51.000 That South Korea, Japan, Europe, they can't just tell us to buzz off if we decide to pick a trade fight because they are reliant on us in so many ways.

00:12:01.000 Now, well, we saw that with Spain within the last two days where they said we couldn't use their bases.

00:12:06.000 Then Trump says, okay, we're no longer going to trade with you.

00:12:08.000 And now they've cradled right away.

00:12:10.000 Yeah, exactly.

00:12:11.000 So there is real value to being an assertive top dog.

00:12:16.000 And you have to, one has to be very careful in the path one charts under that.

00:12:23.000 And I do think President Trump has been a lot more careful about that than prior administrations.

00:12:28.000 And the main problem with all of this has really been messaging, in my opinion.

00:12:28.000 Yeah.

00:12:32.000 The best defense of us attacking them that I've heard was Steve Witkoff when he was on Fox.

00:12:37.000 And for some reason, we hadn't heard that line before from anybody else, which makes no sense to me because if they really had enough uranium to make 11 nukes, I feel like that would have been the top issue that would have persuaded people to being supportive of this.

00:12:53.000 So I really think the messaging has been the problem, how we're kind of all over the place.

00:12:57.000 And that's really causing a lot of the discomfort among people who maybe don't want us to get involved.

00:13:03.000 Yeah, look, I'll say, and I've said this a number of times, that the president of the United States is his own best messenger.

00:13:13.000 He's his own best influencer.

00:13:15.000 He's his own best spokesman.

00:13:16.000 And that's nothing against Caroline or Witkoff or Stephen Miller or Pete Hegseth or any of these guys.

00:13:21.000 They're JD.

00:13:22.000 They're all phenomenal in their own right.

00:13:24.000 But there's only one Donald J. Trump.

00:13:26.000 And you saw the tour de force that he gave at the State of the Union.

00:13:30.000 He got high marks from everyone on the State of the Union.

00:13:32.000 Even CNN's panel said this was a great state of the union.

00:13:36.000 And the Venezuela operation, I'll point out, and as I've said over and over, was something that was celebrated at the State of the Union.

00:13:44.000 It had its own section.

00:13:45.000 It had a medal of honor associated with it.

00:13:47.000 It was given high billing because of its level of success.

00:13:52.000 And that was something where, again, that was an international operation.

00:13:57.000 Now, of course, that was in our hemisphere.

00:13:58.000 So that was kind of a little bit closer to the Don Rowe doctrine, if you will, as opposed to the Middle East.

00:14:06.000 But at the same time, that's something where President Trump was able to smartly and swiftly get the United States involved in something overseas, then pull back with the success, come home with the W and create a new deal that benefited the United States economically.

00:14:21.000 And a lot of people have been hoping for that same type of Venezuela model when it comes vis-a-vis vis-a-vis Iran, where the leader has already been taken out.

00:14:29.000 Now, at the same time, people want to hear that.

00:14:33.000 And Danny, to your point, people want to hear that from the president.

00:14:35.000 They want to see that moment of the president of the United States behind the desk, the resolute desk of the Oval Office, giving that address directly to the American people.

00:14:45.000 And I think people are hoping and expecting a moment like that from their president to hear directly from the top what the game plan is, what the objective is.

00:14:55.000 And if this is going to be longer than a couple of days, longer than a couple of weeks, the American people want to hear that from their president.

00:15:01.000 There's no question.

00:15:02.000 But Danny, I'd love to ask you again: you know, you mentioned, you know, younger people and their sort of view of this.

00:15:10.000 I know that Blake, you and Andrew had interviewed some turning point chapter leaders and chapter members the other day, or I guess it was earlier today on the show.

00:15:20.000 And, you know, I just wanted to kind of hear, so, Danny, like when you're when you're talking, doesn't necessarily have to be TPSA people, but just people in general.

00:15:27.000 You know, when it comes to foreign intervention, foreign wars, we know that Charlie always said that that's something that younger voters, younger members of the coalition were just totally not interested in because they wanted to focus on domestic, they wanted to focus on economic relief.

00:15:42.000 What are you hearing from them?

00:15:44.000 Yeah, I'm hearing a lot of opposition to this, and especially because of Marco Rubio's comments.

00:15:49.000 I mean, it's no secret that Gen Z is very anti-Israel and more so.

00:15:55.000 Yeah, more so.

00:15:56.000 I'm here now, Jack.

00:15:57.000 Doesn't want to get involved.

00:15:58.000 So a lot of thumbs.

00:16:00.000 Breaking the jacket rule again.

00:16:01.000 Ah, yeah, get it off.

00:16:03.000 Take it off.

00:16:03.000 Now, while he takes that one off, we did get a rumble rant from Jay McGuire in 1995.

00:16:09.000 Cut the camera away from him.

00:16:11.000 We can't show that.

00:16:12.000 There's children who watch this show.

00:16:13.000 So he says, as a 30-year-old, I don't want war.

00:16:17.000 However, this Iran war is America first, as Iran is a direct threat when they are directly saying death to America while building a nuke with intent to use it on us.

00:16:28.000 Although another guy in the chat is just saying, he's pointing out chanting, he says chanting is not a threat.

00:16:32.000 I don't know, is chanting a threat?

00:16:35.000 Listen, I think that you could definitely make an American first argument for this, but I am very cognizant of the fact that young people don't love it.

00:16:45.000 I mean, they just don't.

00:16:48.000 We sold President Trump on campus.

00:16:50.000 Charlie did, as the peace president, as the anti-war president.

00:16:55.000 I'm already getting comfortable with the fact that this could have been the right geopolitical national security decision, right?

00:17:02.000 Especially after we talked to Matt Van Swaul this morning talking about how basically I learned something this morning.

00:17:08.000 Jack probably already knew it because he likes to study these things, but it basically takes the same amount of time to go from zero to 5% enriched uranium as it does from basically 5% to 60%.

00:17:23.000 So that first 5% is all you need to actually make nuclear energy from.

00:17:29.000 He basically said there's no good reason to enrich uranium up to 60% unless you're trying to do something nefarious with it or a deterrence, whatever.

00:17:38.000 You know, I'm actually open to the fact that Iran could have been more of a rational actor when it came to nuclear energy than most people believe.

00:17:45.000 But regardless, they'd made threats.

00:17:46.000 They wanted it to be a deterrent factor, maybe an offensive factor.

00:17:51.000 Big story.

00:17:52.000 Big point, rather.

00:17:54.000 It could be the absolute right call from a national security perspective and the absolute worst political decision you could make.

00:18:01.000 Sometimes in life, you're forced with those types of decisions.

00:18:04.000 And I think, you know, we might just be in one of those conundrums right now.

00:18:08.000 Yeah, I think it's, I will say, I mean, we have people in the chat who are saying, like, it's just not true that they were building the nuke.

00:18:13.000 And what I will say is, I don't know what is true.

00:18:15.000 It is harder for them to make the case because I know and you know that they've been six months away from making a nuclear bomb.

00:18:22.000 Well, I was missing the fact that they told us that they annihilated like all their facilities and everything in June.

00:18:28.000 Yeah, but then they told Witkoff and Jared Kushner that they were material to make.

00:18:33.000 But no one else has used that talking point other than Witkoff, which leads me to believe.

00:18:36.000 And Jared.

00:18:37.000 Yeah, I'm actually.

00:18:38.000 What?

00:18:38.000 You think they just couldn't?

00:18:39.000 I don't know.

00:18:40.000 I would think that Rubio would have been starting with that because that feels like the best talking point by a mile over Israel was going to Israel was going in first, so we should go in.

00:18:49.000 I feel like it's much better.

00:18:51.000 Andrew, let me run, if I can, what I said before in front of Andrew, because, and this is what I've said, because obviously there have been messaging challenges on all of this.

00:19:02.000 And my response to all of that, whether you have the Witkoff stuff and you have the Rubio stuff and all the rest of it, I said, well, I think the thing that the American people are waiting for is that moment where the President of the United States delivers an address from the Obolo office.

00:19:16.000 That would be the way to cut through all this.

00:19:18.000 Yeah.

00:19:19.000 And it has to be really, really well crafted messaging because I agree there is a little bit of, well, they had nukes and they were going to make nukes, but we've been being told they're going to make nukes for a long time.

00:19:29.000 I mean, I think that they might have just candidly had a posture where they're like, we're not going to go full nuke, but we just want to be close enough to be, like, make them nervous.

00:19:39.000 That could have been like their position.

00:19:40.000 sounds bizarre to me like you either well because they but they knew there was a red line Being in that position is the most dangerous one to be in.

00:19:48.000 You should either have no nuke or you should have the actual nuke.

00:19:52.000 It doesn't mean that they wouldn't have made that decision because the entirety of the international apparatus was arrayed against them to not get a nuke.

00:19:59.000 Okay, so they maybe knew that that was a red line, but they wanted to be close enough to be dangerous and to make them nervous.

00:20:05.000 Maybe that was their stated deterrent position.

00:20:07.000 I'm just saying it makes a lot of sense that they had material to make nuclear warheads or dirty bombs, which you could do it at 60 to 80% enrichment, apparently, 70%.

00:20:19.000 And there's some indication that they used it in Iraq in 2020 already.

00:20:24.000 I haven't seen that confirmed.

00:20:25.000 I saw it was Catherine Herridge that reported that, I believe.

00:20:28.000 But so here's the thing.

00:20:30.000 The arguments are layered, though.

00:20:32.000 Yeah, maybe they didn't want to lead with the nuke because of the point that you were saying, Blake, that, you know, we've been told this for decades and it's never really materialized.

00:20:42.000 But the idea about the missiles in the intercontinental ICBMs, though, I mean, they were building up an arsenal and a stockpile of missiles that could have been.

00:20:54.000 No, we have that graph too, 504, if we still have that.

00:20:57.000 But they do not have ICBMs.

00:20:59.000 They have, what are they?

00:21:00.000 They were asking for hypersonics from the CCM.

00:21:03.000 I know that.

00:21:04.000 They're still not ICBMs.

00:21:05.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:21:06.000 Fair enough.

00:21:06.000 I mean, IRBMs, intermediate range, they do a lot of.

00:21:10.000 IR, MR, and SR.

00:21:12.000 Yeah, so here's the graph.

00:21:13.000 Iranian missile stockpile versus U.S. interceptor capacity.

00:21:18.000 And so another part of the calculus could have just been this graph, right?

00:21:21.000 That they were going to get further and further, you know, they were going to increase their ability to outpace our production to intercept those as a defensive posture.

00:21:31.000 So, you know, there's a lot of money.

00:21:34.000 Well, keep in mind that Iran also has an increased capacity for the Shahed drones and drone swarms, which has been built up because of the Iraq, or excuse me, the Ukraine war.

00:21:46.000 And those drones, which you've now seen, if you go look at Bahrain and UAE, it almost looks like Iran has switched from the ballistic missile posture to more of a drone attack posture because they can send some money, or we're probably going to be cheaper to see, you know, they're cheaper, and you're probably going to start to see layered attacks because these air interceptors are so much more expensive.

00:22:07.000 But at the same time, you've got to try to use them as much as possible to take out whatever you can.

00:22:12.000 Meanwhile, you've got the kamikaze drones that could just slip right in.

00:22:15.000 We talked about this so much when we were talking about the context of the Ukraine war.

00:22:21.000 Now they're using it in a sort of a counter-offensive counter-strike method.

00:22:25.000 And it's very successful against air defense.

00:22:27.000 It's sort of the answer to smart weapons is dumb weapons.

00:22:31.000 Yeah, I think there's a lot of truth in what you're saying.

00:22:33.000 And I think that could have motivated the reason for the rationale for going now.

00:22:38.000 I think the central question, though, is not about air power superiority.

00:22:44.000 I think we've got that established.

00:22:46.000 We can do what we want from the air.

00:22:49.000 The question and why this could continue dragging on is why, you know, how much popular support did the Ayatollah and the IRGC and the regime have in Iran?

00:23:02.000 And that is a question.

00:23:04.000 And then if it's low, how much muscle memory is baked into the population after they just slaughtered 20 or 30,000 protesters that came out?

00:23:13.000 Like there could just be a function here where they're so scared to come out after getting 30,000 of them killed, they're not sure what happens next.

00:23:22.000 Are they going to go out on the street and then they're going to get bombed by the RGC?

00:23:25.000 Also, how would they organize?

00:23:27.000 How do you organize?

00:23:28.000 Like, how do you cause the dominoes to start falling to oust the regime?

00:23:34.000 And I think that feels muddy to me.

00:23:37.000 It feels very unclear how you start a popular uprising, even with the air power raining down on the RRGC and the regime.

00:23:44.000 I just don't know.

00:23:45.000 Whatever happened.

00:23:47.000 Whatever happened.

00:23:47.000 We had a lot of air security in Afghanistan for 20 years.

00:23:50.000 Correct.

00:23:51.000 Didn't cause the regime change.

00:23:53.000 Well, and we did boost on the ground, right?

00:23:55.000 Yeah, and we did get regime change, but it wasn't a peaceful thing.

00:23:58.000 We caused, you know, there was sectarian.

00:24:01.000 We need a mass aground invasion.

00:24:03.000 Yeah, I'm just saying, like, even with that, it depends on the nature of the country itself.

00:24:09.000 Like, is Iran a country that could basically just, at this point, peacefully turn over leadership?

00:24:16.000 Or is there 40% of the country that's going to hang on for dear life?

00:24:21.000 And we've been, you know, Blake and I kept talking about this.

00:24:23.000 We had these Iranians that would come on the show during the popular uprising, during the protests.

00:24:30.000 And we asked ourselves after it was done, we're like, was this an op?

00:24:34.000 Like, are we getting spun?

00:24:36.000 And, you know, it was unclear to us because they were all basically saying nobody likes the regime.

00:24:41.000 Nobody likes the IRGC.

00:24:43.000 And everybody loves this Pavla, whatever his name.

00:24:47.000 I always forget.

00:24:47.000 What's his name?

00:24:49.000 Reza Pallavi.

00:24:50.000 Reza Pallavi.

00:24:51.000 And Blake and I were like.

00:24:53.000 Yeah, we just got endless.

00:24:54.000 We just got endless stuff where it's like, I saw the funniest one, which was a thread online that was like, it was like, ask me anything.

00:25:02.000 I'm inside Iran.

00:25:03.000 And like every other answer, he's finding ways like, we're all just waiting for the Shah to order us to go into the streets.

00:25:09.000 Yeah, okay, bud.

00:25:10.000 Okay, bud.

00:25:13.000 Andrew Colvett here.

00:25:13.000 Hi, folks.

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00:26:02.000 And remember, YReFi doesn't care what your credit score is.

00:26:05.000 Just go to yrefi.com and tell them your friend Andrew sent you.

00:26:12.000 But another thing we want to hit here, so as Dan said, Gen Z seems pretty skeptical.

00:26:17.000 We saw that with our students.

00:26:19.000 But I think another interesting populist angle of potential anger on this war, this has become, I think, the first big story, first big crisis of any kind, where we've had these modern prediction markets play such a huge role, which is we've got people casting bets on Kalchi, on Polymarket, probably on other places as well, for how the war is going to go.

00:26:47.000 And we have a disturbing amount of evidence that military insiders were able to bet on what would happen, for example, to the Ayatollah.

00:26:56.000 The New York Times had an article that I think about a thousand people were able to cast bets specifically that about a thousand people cast bets specifically that there would be bomb strikes on Iran, I believe, on Saturday, because it happened Saturday morning or Saturday afternoon in Iran.

00:27:14.000 And that was way more than any surrounding day.

00:27:18.000 It's not just that a ton of people are betting.

00:27:20.000 It was clear a ton of people had information.

00:27:22.000 Some of them made tens of thousands of dollars.

00:27:24.000 Some of them, I think, made half a million dollars or more.

00:27:27.000 Some people really cashed in on this.

00:27:30.000 And there's two possible answers.

00:27:32.000 One is there's people who are really good at reading the signals, maybe in terms of radio traffic, internet traffic.

00:27:40.000 Like they can see the signs when a military strike is about to happen.

00:27:43.000 Or we can do the much more direct thing, which is it's currently not even illegal to insider trade on this sort of thing.

00:27:50.000 And you might have people in our admin, people elsewhere in the government, people in foreign admins, people in foreign militaries.

00:27:57.000 And they got the news, this is going down.

00:27:59.000 And the first thing they did was they opened up a prediction market and they said, yeah, I'm going to bet $10,000 that we bomb tomorrow.

00:28:08.000 Yeah, it was 158 accounts placed hundreds of bets of at least $1,000 or more.

00:28:15.000 Were they all in the Pentagon?

00:28:19.000 Yeah, it would have had to be.

00:28:20.000 I don't know.

00:28:21.000 Yeah, like who would even be the most obvious actors here?

00:28:28.000 Jack, did you place a bet?

00:28:30.000 Did you do it?

00:28:31.000 You've got good sources.

00:28:32.000 I don't gamble.

00:28:33.000 And, you know, I've actually kind of been racking my brain about this for a while now.

00:28:39.000 And I just, I just, I don't have like a prohibition against gambling.

00:28:44.000 I just don't do it.

00:28:45.000 And I'm sorry, but these prediction markets are just gambling.

00:28:48.000 They're just online gambling.

00:28:49.000 It's online betting.

00:28:50.000 There's no question.

00:28:51.000 But this is the same thing.

00:28:52.000 And so, no, this is insider trading on kind of questions of importance.

00:28:56.000 And there's like two levels of badness.

00:28:58.000 I don't, I mean, I don't think it had to have been insider training.

00:29:02.000 Say this because, on human events, I didn't have any specific inside knowledge that the bombing was going to start on on uh, saturday.

00:29:11.000 But we told everybody that and you know we went and and Andrew, you know, I remember, you know you went and like kind of said hey, let's all sort of be around the don't go too far from the studio this weekend.

00:29:24.000 So like we, we kind of had a sense that things were up.

00:29:26.000 It's more so the thousand dollars or more, I was gonna say it's one thing to say, Be available if stuff goes off.

00:29:34.000 It's another thing to put money down, like real money.

00:29:36.000 No, no, no, no, I'm not disagreeing.

00:29:38.000 I'm just saying there are ways you could have done it, devil's advocate, but yeah, this doesn't seem like that.

00:29:44.000 I think there's but Blake brings up a good point.

00:29:46.000 This is like not a regulated industry.

00:29:48.000 You know, this is like, it's not necessarily illegal to do this.

00:29:51.000 And I've brought this up a few times before, and I'm just waiting because you create disturbing incentives when you can bet on this sort of thing.

00:29:57.000 Because as an example, let's say President Trump was super 50-50 on whether to do it.

00:30:04.000 And a guy is like, I can make a lot of money if I can make a bombing happen tomorrow.

00:30:09.000 And he tilts the president a certain way.

00:30:12.000 He's one of his advisors who says the best time to hit us tomorrow, not on Monday.

00:30:16.000 And that doesn't have to be on war stuff.

00:30:17.000 It could be, imagine a guy who places a bunch of bets.

00:30:20.000 Let's say Justice Alito retires from the Supreme Court and there's five favorites and like some long shot and the guy, it's some guy who advises the president bets $1,000, $10,000 on this 1% long shot.

00:30:34.000 And then he just endlessly lobbies the president on that specific guy, not because he'll be the best justice, but because that guy could make a ton of money.

00:30:42.000 But obviously it's most worrying on military stuff because let's say Iran has guys watching these markets and they're able to see, oh, a crap load of money just came in on a strike happening tomorrow.

00:30:53.000 Yeah, I actually have it.

00:30:54.000 On Friday morning, it was at 7% that we strike and then it closed Friday night at 26%.

00:31:01.000 So we went from 7% to 26% just Friday alone.

00:31:04.000 I'm just going to say, I think a straightforward thing we should say is like, if you are betting on a U.S. military operation based on insider knowledge, we should treat that the same way we treat any other espionage, deliberately leaking U.S. military intel.

00:31:18.000 And I'm a bit of an authoritarian.

00:31:19.000 I would say, you know, if you do that, bam, firing squad.

00:31:24.000 Oh, come on.

00:31:25.000 You would actually leak in U.S. military intelligence?

00:31:27.000 I mean, that's true.

00:31:28.000 That's true.

00:31:28.000 Okay, okay.

00:31:29.000 It would actually be a good way to sow deception, though.

00:31:32.000 So if Secretary Hegset is watching this, you know, and we're about to launch another round of strikes or something, you should deliberately bet money on like the wrong day or something and just show this huge spike going up on one day so that, you know, perhaps our adversaries think, oh my gosh, this is going to be the day they move things out of place, but then that actually isn't the day.

00:31:53.000 And then you strike the day before or something like that.

00:31:55.000 Oh, that's for sure real.

00:31:57.000 But I would point out that's kind of like you can have fake spies, fake double agents, fake leaks of intelligence, but you still have to very sharply punish real leaks of intelligence.

00:32:08.000 Absolutely.

00:32:09.000 That's interesting.

00:32:10.000 So Foz is bringing up a good point.

00:32:13.000 You can use crypto on these prediction markets, which means there's a level of anonymity, right?

00:32:20.000 So senators introduced a bill to ban officials from trading on prediction markets.

00:32:25.000 Jeff Merkley from Oregon and Amy Klobuchar, so two Democrats.

00:32:32.000 I don't know.

00:32:33.000 I kind of think it's right up there with banning stock trading, to be honest.

00:32:37.000 Which we should probably members of Congress.

00:32:40.000 But it's both, in a lot of ways, it's more sinister because you can have a direct financial incentive to just on any potential policy thing.

00:32:51.000 Like, okay, you know, this company will benefit from Congress's regulatory actions.

00:32:56.000 That's bad, and we know Congress does it.

00:32:58.000 But now we're just on the level of whether we go to war or not is substantially based on how much one can insider trade on what the decision we reach is.

00:33:06.000 That's really spooky.

00:33:07.000 Yeah, I actually think you're right.

00:33:08.000 The more I'm thinking about this, the more we really need to kind of clamp down on this because as a matter of fact, the banning stock trading, we should just do it all together as one bill.

00:33:19.000 Ban officials trading on prediction markets.

00:33:21.000 Yeah, and officials, I just get generally concerned about the amount that the way these prediction markets let you corrupt the process of government.

00:33:31.000 And I think it's just a ticking time bomb until we have a really bad scandal related to it.

00:33:36.000 Like, this is almost marginal.

00:33:38.000 There's a really huge one that we could have, and it's going to eventually occur.

00:33:42.000 A funny spin-off of this, by the way, is that they had betting markets on Calchi about whether the Supreme Leader, Kamenei, would be out by March 1st.

00:33:54.000 And a lot of people were betting on that, possibly because they knew a strike would be hitting him.

00:33:58.000 And Calchi has announced that actually that was only related to him leaving office.

00:34:04.000 Ah, you can't bet on that.

00:34:05.000 They can't bet on a death because that would create bad incentives.

00:34:08.000 And so they say they are not fulfilling the contract for...

00:34:12.000 They're just returning the money, right?

00:34:13.000 They're just going to return the money, and they're not letting people collect their winnings on him getting turned into, you know, pavement paint.

00:34:20.000 Got him on a technicality.

00:34:22.000 Got him on a technicality.

00:34:24.000 That would be super bum.

00:34:25.000 That would bum you out, though.

00:34:27.000 Imagine like Lindsey Graham betting on something like that.

00:34:31.000 I bet he would have put a grip down on that and then not getting the payout.

00:34:36.000 Poor Lindsey.

00:34:37.000 By the way, can we just talk about this guy for okay?

00:34:39.000 Lindsey Graham, this guy is like frothing at the mouth, just like, let's bomb more.

00:34:47.000 Let's like remove more dictators and regime change.

00:34:50.000 And For the life of me, I do not know why they let this man behind the camera.

00:34:58.000 Why do they let this guy behind the microphone?

00:35:00.000 Why?

00:35:02.000 If you are wanting popular support for this war, you should put a clampdown order on Lindsey Graham because every time the man talks, like, I cringe.

00:35:13.000 And it doesn't matter what good point that he may be making.

00:35:17.000 I just can't listen to it anymore.

00:35:18.000 That's my rant.

00:35:19.000 Well, now we're going a talks of Cuba.

00:35:22.000 Oh, now, so, yeah.

00:35:24.000 Well, listen, I think the whole point with Cuba is that you would maybe be able that apparently after Venezuela fell, Cuba's probably.

00:35:31.000 Yeah, well, and also Cuba's, I mean, affects us so much more than Iran, which is 7,000 miles away.

00:35:37.000 Cuba's 90 miles from Florida.

00:35:39.000 Yeah, and by the way, you know, I do think that there is a case to be made that Cuba could fall just all on its own.

00:35:45.000 Yeah.

00:35:46.000 People don't, and maybe Jack, you might know this because you spent some time in Cuba, but the Cuban intelligence services are still one of the most highly regarded in the entire world.

00:35:55.000 Like the whole country sucks, but like the one thing that they have that is pretty effective is their Intel op.

00:36:02.000 It's the only thing they put their money into.

00:36:03.000 It's like their biggest export.

00:36:05.000 It's their biggest.

00:36:06.000 They sell it to Venezuela.

00:36:07.000 Yeah, they sell it.

00:36:09.000 It didn't help them much there.

00:36:10.000 No, well, it's true.

00:36:12.000 No, there's no question that the Cuban government, the Cuban communist regime has been definitely weakened for the first time since, I guess, the 1950s.

00:36:23.000 You don't have a Castro in office, right?

00:36:26.000 And so this is a time where the cult of personality around the Castro family isn't necessarily there in the way that it was.

00:36:32.000 It's something that's clearly right off the coast of the United States.

00:36:36.000 It's something where, look, it's our oldest overseas base is Guantanamo Bay, where it's been a year.

00:36:42.000 Since 1898, there was talk about annexing it after the Spanish-American War.

00:36:47.000 There's lots of arguments that America should have done this.

00:36:50.000 I'm actually kind of partial to some of those arguments.

00:36:53.000 Again, that's, you know, hypothetical alternate history type stuff.

00:36:56.000 You know, obviously, past is unchangeable at this point, but at the same time, it would clearly be much, much more in America's interests to have a friendly government there in Cuba.

00:37:09.000 There's no question.

00:37:10.000 And it honestly would be in Cuba's interest too.

00:37:13.000 Monroe doctrine.

00:37:14.000 This is our hemisphere.

00:37:15.000 Yes.

00:37:16.000 Listen, I have one frame of reference for far-flung wars in the Middle East.

00:37:22.000 I have a whole other frame of reference for wars in our hemisphere, or at least Havana is like 90 miles from Miami, right?

00:37:31.000 It's like right there.

00:37:32.000 Yeah, I'm not saying I want to go invade just like I saw Danny give me the stink guy.

00:37:36.000 I'm not trying to go invade Cuba.

00:37:38.000 I'm just saying the interests are a lot easier to sell.

00:37:41.000 Well, yeah, and that's an easier thing to sell to the American people than Iran just because of its proximity to the United States, Cuba.

00:37:49.000 Invade?

00:37:49.000 Blake?

00:37:50.000 I just don't.

00:37:50.000 I just feel like Iran is like 150.

00:37:53.000 Okay, is it 1960?

00:37:55.000 Cuba, Cuba just is like a dump.

00:37:59.000 If we overthrew it, this would be a classic case of where we'd suddenly be suckered into giving them $20 billion.

00:38:05.000 It's just this decrepit place.

00:38:07.000 It has an average age of like 50.

00:38:09.000 Almost every, anyone who can get out of that country is left.

00:38:13.000 Who cares?

00:38:15.000 We've talked about Iran plausibly being this like Cold War hangover that all these 65-year-olds remember the hostage crisis and want to do something.

00:38:23.000 Iran is that on steroids, not Iran.

00:38:26.000 Cuba is that on steroids.

00:38:27.000 It's people who are still mad about the Bay of Pigs and maybe the JFK assassination might have involved it.

00:38:34.000 They haven't done anything lately.

00:38:36.000 They're just sucking.

00:38:38.000 The only thing they have are good baseball players.

00:38:40.000 And we get them to come here.

00:38:41.000 I mean, listen, here's the thing.

00:38:41.000 Yeah.

00:38:43.000 This is what I'm saying.

00:38:44.000 Lindsey Graham needs to shut his yapper.

00:38:47.000 Stop talking.

00:38:48.000 Get him out of the view of a camera for the love.

00:38:52.000 I know this is a free country.

00:38:54.000 But if I'm the Trump administration, I'm telling Lindsey Graham, stop talking.

00:38:58.000 You are only harming the cause.

00:38:59.000 That's all I'm saying.

00:39:00.000 We're going to get off the war here in a sec, but there was a question for Jack from Sandra Gebhart.

00:39:00.000 All right.

00:39:06.000 Jack, can you explain war, meaning we've been successful with quick attacks?

00:39:11.000 Why do we need to keep going in now?

00:39:13.000 I know it's not cut and dry, but there is a chance we can be done quick.

00:39:19.000 I'm reading this again.

00:39:20.000 Why do we need to keep going in now?

00:39:22.000 I know it's not cut and dry, but is there a chance we can be done quick?

00:39:27.000 And yeah, I mean, I'm not exactly sure what the question is, but I guess I'll explain it in terms of this.

00:39:34.000 You know, the difference here between Venezuela and Iran is the difference in regimes.

00:39:40.000 So in Venezuela, you had a durable regime, but at the same time, you had you have a lot more influence to bear and a single, singular person who's really in charge of that regime being, you know, in the case of that, Nicolas Maduro and someone, Del Codriguez, who was willing to work with the United States.

00:39:59.000 In the case of Iran, it's much more of a mixed bag.

00:40:02.000 And I was on Piers Morgan with like Tim Miller and some people, and they were like laughing about this.

00:40:07.000 And I was trying to explain to them that, you know, in Iran, it is mixed leadership.

00:40:11.000 It's a decentralized revolutionary regime where you have the IRGC military, you know, secret military, religious police kind of thing, which we don't really have a cognate for in the United States.

00:40:25.000 We have the civilian leadership in terms of the president, the foreign minister, and then, of course, the Ayatollah and the system of mullahs and now the Ayatollah son, who may or may not have taken over.

00:40:37.000 And so it's not like you can just change out one person and suddenly they, you know, become pro-U.S.

00:40:43.000 It's just not like that.

00:40:45.000 They've also had much, much longer to be in power and have always been since 1979, a revolutionary state for 47 years.

00:40:54.000 And so they built up all of these institutions.

00:40:57.000 They built up all of this power, all of this internal domestic control for the Islamic government.

00:41:04.000 They just don't have the same type of government that a secular state would have.

00:41:09.000 This is also actually kind of the reason that they didn't always work with the communists, right?

00:41:14.000 Because the communists were seen as atheists.

00:41:16.000 And so even though they were roughly aligned with the Soviet Union during those years, they weren't necessarily super pro-Soviet Union either.

00:41:23.000 They also supported the Islamists and the Mujahajin in Afghanistan for the same reason.

00:41:29.000 So, you know, perhaps it would have been better for their regime to have done so, but they're very fiercely independent.

00:41:35.000 They're very hard to work with.

00:41:37.000 And they are, for lack of a better term, actually Islamic jihadists and radicals.

00:41:42.000 You know, most people don't understand the ethnicities, how many ethnicities there are in Iran.

00:41:48.000 Yeah, there's a lot.

00:41:49.000 I was just looking at this, though.

00:41:51.000 Iran is a diverse, multi-ethnic nation.

00:41:54.000 It's diverse.

00:41:55.000 It's 90 million people, with ethnic Persians constituting the majority, approximately 61%.

00:42:02.000 Other major ethnic groups include the Azeris, 16%, Kurds, 10%, the Lurs, 6%, Baloch, Arabs, and various Turkic tribes, such as Turkmen and Kashkai.

00:42:15.000 So this is a, I mean, this is, whereas Venice, okay, New World is different than old world.

00:42:20.000 New world, you got Venezuela.

00:42:21.000 It's got this like national identity.

00:42:23.000 They kind of fall in line, even though they might have different mixes of European and indigenous or whatever.

00:42:30.000 This is something different.

00:42:31.000 This is old world stuff where these people have really deeply entrenched identities.

00:42:37.000 And that's why you get factionalism.

00:42:39.000 That's why you get this tribalism.

00:42:41.000 That's why when there's a power vacuum, this tribe fights that tribe and this group, you know, goes.

00:42:46.000 I will say, my understanding from people I've talked to is a lot of these groups are basically still just Persians.

00:42:52.000 Like that on your map here, you've got these purple guys along the Caspian Sea.

00:42:55.000 They're totally just Persian.

00:42:57.000 I think you're right.

00:42:58.000 I tend to agree with that, but it's still the Kurds are very different than, you know, and yeah, the Kurds I would put aside, but Persian identity, right?

00:43:08.000 The Persian Empire is an ancient state.

00:43:11.000 So it already had sort of this identity as a country in the sense that just in a different way that Iraq and Afghanistan never really had because there was this Persian empire identity that they all sort of had to begin with.

00:43:27.000 So it isn't necessary, you're not necessarily going to see the same level of separatism as you would in Afghanistan or Iraq.

00:43:35.000 Now, the Kurds, obviously, I wouldn't necessarily put in that same bucket, but at the same time, there's real questions as to whether or not the Kurds are interested in going out against the Iranian army.

00:43:46.000 I agree.

00:43:46.000 I think the bigger question is how much popular support does the regime still have?

00:43:51.000 And nobody can give me an answer.

00:43:53.000 By the way, we got a question.

00:43:54.000 You can see videos, by the way, of people marching in Tahir Square with pictures of the Ayatollah carrying flags of the regime.

00:44:05.000 Again, martyrdom is massive in Shia Islam to understand the power of giving them a martyr, someone who died for the Islamic Revolution, someone who died at the hands of the great Satan and the little Satan.

00:44:21.000 The U.S.-Israeli joint regime.

00:44:23.000 Again, putting it in their words.

00:44:25.000 So they're certainly viewing him as a holy martyr.

00:44:27.000 They're certainly viewing him as someone to uphold.

00:44:31.000 And it's going to galvanize supporters of the regime in the same way that it may also lend some credibility to the opposition.

00:44:38.000 I hear what you're saying, Jack.

00:44:40.000 We got a comment from old Floridian says, you guys need to talk to Robbie Dawkins about what's going on inside Iran.

00:44:45.000 We actually had Robbie on the Charlie Girk show and got a lot of emails about him.

00:44:50.000 And I've known Robbie for years.

00:44:52.000 He's a good dude.

00:44:54.000 He's very bullish, though.

00:44:57.000 And yes, he's in-country.

00:44:59.000 He says the popular uprising is going to materialize.

00:45:02.000 In Iran International, they're circling Sunday at the break of dawn that people are going to hit the streets.

00:45:09.000 I hope all of that's true.

00:45:10.000 I'm just really skeptical because you might not want to tell the ROGC that.

00:45:16.000 Yeah, I mean, exactly.

00:45:17.000 So anyways, here we go.

00:45:20.000 All right.

00:45:21.000 That's my thoughts.

00:45:22.000 Well, before we move on from prediction markets, Blake, I was just wondering if we could get a prediction market going on if Strong Cell will grow your hair back.

00:45:29.000 And if so, what is the highway eyebrow right here?

00:45:32.000 I am 100% confident that I shall have a completely luscious and full head of hair.

00:45:37.000 He's got to be a sprouter right there.

00:45:40.000 There's a sprouter right there.

00:45:41.000 He shall bloom forth like flowers in the desert or something.

00:45:49.000 Before he ever stepped behind a microphone, Charlie understood something important.

00:45:53.000 Leadership begins with learning.

00:45:56.000 He didn't chase a diploma or a title.

00:45:58.000 He chased truth.

00:45:59.000 Through Hillsdale College's free online courses, he studied the great works of the classics, the principles of the American founding, and the life-changing truths of the Bible.

00:46:08.000 Those ideas didn't just inform him.

00:46:10.000 They shaped his character, strengthened his convictions, and prepared him for the challenges ahead.

00:46:15.000 One of the courses he took was the Genesis story, taught by Hillsdale professor Dr. Justin Jackson.

00:46:20.000 This free online course explores the relationship between God and man, what happens when that relationship is broken, and the path toward reconciliation.

00:46:28.000 It's a real college course, rigorous, thoughtful, and accessible to anyone willing to learn.

00:46:34.000 You can take the very same course completely free.

00:46:36.000 Grow stronger in your faith, gain clarity about humanity and your place in the world.

00:46:41.000 Prepare yourself for a life with courage and conviction.

00:46:44.000 Visit charlieforhillsdale.com to enroll today.

00:46:48.000 That's charlieforhillsdale.com.

00:46:50.000 Learn deeply.

00:46:51.000 Lead boldly.

00:46:52.000 Carry it forward.

00:46:56.000 But we have a very important topic that has nothing to do with Iran.

00:47:00.000 It has nothing to do with Cuba, mercifully.

00:47:02.000 And that is Luigi the Musical.

00:47:06.000 Oh, not Mario's brother, that other Luigi.

00:47:09.000 Luigi Man G O Ne.

00:47:12.000 I think Jack should go to the opening night and do Man on the Street.

00:47:15.000 I want to go to the opening night.

00:47:18.000 Blake and Jack need to go.

00:47:20.000 The thing is, I just kind of want to see the musical.

00:47:22.000 Yeah, we have clips.

00:47:25.000 I'm not sure if this is a clip from the musical or just about it.

00:47:27.000 It just says clip, but I think we've got to see it.

00:47:30.000 It is $4.60,000.

00:47:32.000 Can I get a soap and some towels, I guess?

00:47:35.000 Yeah, let's just check your balance, Mangione.

00:47:38.000 It looks like it is $400,000.

00:47:47.000 Wait, what?

00:47:48.000 What are you talking about?

00:47:48.000 What?

00:47:49.000 What do you mean?

00:47:50.000 Where is that coming from?

00:47:52.000 It looks like a couple of places.

00:47:55.000 Nopes for healthcare reform.

00:48:00.000 Bottoms United for Luigi.

00:48:05.000 This last Lindsey Graham?

00:48:09.000 Okay, I saw that clip earlier.

00:48:11.000 I didn't understand.

00:48:12.000 Foz was like, oh, good tie-in for the next clip.

00:48:14.000 And I didn't catch it.

00:48:15.000 But I actually LOL'd at the Lindsey Group.

00:48:18.000 Lindsey Graham.

00:48:19.000 So that was an excerpt from, I suppose, not a song.

00:48:22.000 What are the musical numbers in this game?

00:48:24.000 I have no idea, but the San Fran looked fabulous.

00:48:26.000 Yeah, so for those who couldn't see it, they had Luigi in an orange jumpsuit.

00:48:30.000 So I guess I think the context is that must be him after he's been arrested.

00:48:33.000 Yeah, he's getting their donation.

00:48:35.000 He's got a show and you buy supplies and they check your, you know.

00:48:38.000 Yeah.

00:48:39.000 Anyways, I think, Jack, I think you should start.

00:48:43.000 I mean, look, this is disgusting.

00:48:46.000 There's no question.

00:48:47.000 And this is, it just goes to show you that the actual rise of support for Bolshevik activity is absolutely alive and well in the United States.

00:49:01.000 Not only, no, so not only do we see the sort of transformation of Luigi Maggioni into a folk hero who is an assassin, by the way, who shot and killed someone in cold blood murder on the street on video, that we've also seen the, I can't believe we're showing the video.

00:49:18.000 We've seen him lose the access to the death penalty.

00:49:23.000 I think the death penalty has been stripped in both cases now, the state and federal case, which he's facing.

00:49:30.000 And by the way, he shows no remorse for his actions.

00:49:32.000 He was lashing out in court just a couple of days ago when he was in his last hearing.

00:49:37.000 So it certainly shows no remorse.

00:49:39.000 Tyler Robinson also shows no remorse, by the way, smirking and laughing in his court hearings.

00:49:46.000 And you see, Maggioni, also, I think they took away his murder charge in one of the cases.

00:49:56.000 I'm trying to remember off the top of my head, but it's the way that this has been handled in the courts is completely insane.

00:50:02.000 Public opinion is absolutely playing a role here.

00:50:06.000 The judiciary is, by and large, in agreement with Antifa activity here.

00:50:11.000 And, you know, what can I say?

00:50:14.000 It's, it's, it's Sacco and Vanzetti got what they deserved, and Luigi deserves exactly the same.

00:50:20.000 And yet here we are 100 years later, and we just can't seem to deal with these Italian anarchists anymore.

00:50:25.000 A little swipe at the attack.

00:50:27.000 I'm looking at whether it's any good.

00:50:29.000 And I guess so the San How does San Francisco run now?

00:50:31.000 It's just, it's running in New York, only a few blocks away from where the murder was committed.

00:50:38.000 A theater critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, which I guess something called a newspaper.

00:50:45.000 I don't know if those, I didn't know those existed still, but so this Lila Janiak said, if only the show itself could justify the hype, bringing national attention to the often underappreciated Bay Area theater scene.

00:50:58.000 Unfortunately, it just isn't any good.

00:51:01.000 Which I've got to say, how can San Francisco, like, how do they produce a bad musical?

00:51:07.000 If there's, I feel like if any town has enough, you know.

00:51:10.000 Remember the Gay Men's Choir?

00:51:12.000 I was just about to say that people who should be able to produce good musicals, it should be San Francisco.

00:51:18.000 Where is that that musical?

00:51:19.000 We're coming for your kids.

00:51:20.000 Yeah, it's coming for your children.

00:51:21.000 Gay San Francisco.

00:51:24.000 Yeah.

00:51:24.000 You'd think that, yeah.

00:51:26.000 That wasn't any good either.

00:51:27.000 It was just shockingly horrific.

00:51:29.000 So it says the musical, a satirical prison comedy inspired by the bizarre, true story.

00:51:34.000 It's not bizarre.

00:51:35.000 It's disgusting.

00:51:35.000 It's murderous.

00:51:37.000 Of three high-profile inmates housed together at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, sold out its preview run.

00:51:44.000 It is now adding news.

00:51:45.000 Part comedy, part social commentary, Luigi the Musical reimagines larger-than-life public figures as exaggerated characters representing three disillusioned pillars of American life.

00:51:56.000 Healthcare, Hollywood, and tech.

00:51:58.000 Luigi the Musical uses comedy to bring deeper questions to the surface, says director and co-creator Nova Bradford.

00:52:05.000 But it says Luigi the Musical doesn't glorify violence.

00:52:08.000 It interrogates it.

00:52:10.000 Oh, God.

00:52:11.000 That's there.

00:52:12.000 We need a ban on using the word interrogate in describing anything that is not the police questioning somebody because they do that.

00:52:20.000 That's a total college postmodern world word.

00:52:23.000 Yeah, so would they do a J6 musical?

00:52:26.000 Would they say, oh, J6, which, you know, where no one died, no one was killed on J6.

00:52:32.000 No one was killed by MAGA, right, on J6.

00:52:35.000 Ashley Babbitt died, you know, the protester who died.

00:52:38.000 No, because they would lose their minds if anyone did something like that.

00:52:42.000 But if you do a Luigi Maggioni uh musical where Luigi Maggioni is clearly, by the way, the protagonist of this thing, where he's sympathetic and anti-hero.

00:52:51.000 It's a comedy that, yeah, he's he's they're basically, I don't even think they're giving him an anti-hero arc.

00:52:56.000 I think they're just showing him as a hero.

00:52:59.000 Yeah, they're just they're just making him like the hero and everyone's a celebrity.

00:53:02.000 And he's just what if they made an I wonder if he's actually getting any money out of this thing.

00:53:10.000 Probably not because I think it would be illegal for him to get it under Son of Sam.

00:53:14.000 Yeah, there's that act that's I forget what the name of the law is, but you can't benefit from it.

00:53:19.000 The actual son of Sam sold his memoirs, I believe.

00:53:22.000 Son of Sam law.

00:53:23.000 Yeah, that's right.

00:53:24.000 So yeah, so here we got the clip.

00:53:26.000 It's 635.

00:53:27.000 Let's play it.

00:53:28.000 Saturday Night Live does this all the time, which is why we lead it into satire.

00:53:32.000 Satire you have to take to an extreme so people know this is not about the people.

00:53:37.000 It's about the themes that we're interrogating.

00:53:39.000 The reaction, I think, about whether we were in the right to be creating art in this way also overlooks the fact that we are all kind of exposed to frequent information and takes on these things all the time.

00:53:53.000 There is a lot of violence surrounding us right now.

00:53:56.000 And of course, we are not, our intention is never going to be to make a mockery of that.

00:54:03.000 Ever.

00:54:04.000 We would never make it.

00:54:07.000 Every single person was gay.

00:54:08.000 all three of them were gay mafia people did that guy here's the issue Did that first guy have like a Hitler mustache?

00:54:13.000 He kind of looked like he did.

00:54:16.000 No, that's just a San Francisco gay men's choir mustache.

00:54:18.000 So zoom in on that.

00:54:19.000 We need to zoom in on the slider produced.

00:54:23.000 We should look back at that.

00:54:24.000 That's a toothbrush filmography or whatever.

00:54:26.000 I think that stageography.

00:54:28.000 So here's the big problem.

00:54:29.000 And I'm stealing this from Foz.

00:54:31.000 He's totally right on this.

00:54:32.000 The big problem is that there's a freaking audience for this.

00:54:38.000 We have become so unmoored from, you know, morality.

00:54:43.000 We've become so unmoored from the value of life and that life should be protected at all costs.

00:54:49.000 Okay, yeah.

00:54:50.000 You can interrogate the healthcare system without, you know, further contributing to creating a folk hero out of Luigi Maggioni, who is a cold-blooded murderer who is guilty of first-degree murder and assassination.

00:55:04.000 And, you know, what happened to Charlie, I mean, I'll never forget the clips of Charlie warning about the rise of assassination culture, only to see him become a victim of it.

00:55:16.000 And for them to do this and to completely brush it off and talk about his art and that this is some elevated thing, no.

00:55:23.000 Well, we have a graph on it.

00:55:25.000 31 is the graph that 30% of lives believe it's totally justified to commit violence.

00:55:31.000 Will live in infamy.

00:55:33.000 Disgusting.

00:55:34.000 I'll just say, you know, because I know we're all thinking it.

00:55:37.000 They would do one of these about Charlie if Tyler Robinson was, you know, more photogenic.

00:55:46.000 And yeah.

00:55:47.000 And if they could get away with it, I would literally, I would, they're, you know, they would.

00:55:53.000 I would be absolutely nuts, and I would do everything in my power to just ruin their days.

00:56:00.000 Everything in your power.

00:56:02.000 Not obviously not that legally speaking in Minecraft.

00:56:06.000 I would, I would, I would try and block it.

00:56:10.000 I would sue them.

00:56:10.000 I would, I would protest outside the venue.

00:56:13.000 But does anyone disagree?

00:56:15.000 I totally agree with you.

00:56:16.000 I agree.

00:56:17.000 I agree.

00:56:18.000 Yeah.

00:56:20.000 That they would, they, they'd be laughing about it and they would, um, they would, they would clearly be mocking Erica.

00:56:28.000 Um, there's no question about that.

00:56:29.000 We see that every day now, which is disgusting.

00:56:32.000 And they would make that a huge part of it, and it would be, it would just be turned into a huge joke.

00:56:38.000 Yeah, exactly.

00:56:38.000 Yeah.

00:56:39.000 It's sort of like this giant mockery.

00:56:41.000 It really is.

00:56:42.000 It's making a mockery out of something extraordinarily.

00:56:45.000 I can see the reality manifesting in front of me where the show keeps playing, or they just bring it back where they successfully meme this so hard that Luigi gets off on a heinous murder he committed and then he shows up at his own musical, his own satirical musical.

00:57:01.000 But there is a musical called The Assassins, isn't there?

00:57:05.000 I don't know.

00:57:06.000 I'm not a huge musical theater enthusiast, but uh.

00:57:09.000 So there's a musical by Steven Sondheim called The Assassins.

00:57:13.000 It is a, you know, this is kind of a also uses satire.

00:57:20.000 I mean, Steven Sondheim is very, very famous musical theater guy.

00:57:26.000 And I'm trying to remember the cat.

00:57:28.000 So the characters in this are John Wilkes Booth, Charles Gateau, Leon Cholgosh, who shot McKinley, Giuseppe Zengara, John Hinkley, Lee Harvey Oswald.

00:57:43.000 So those are all, those are all cast members of, or you know, members of the, of the show in The Assassins.

00:57:50.000 And it's, you know, it's, it's all about them.

00:57:52.000 Pretty fun.

00:57:55.000 Well, in the book of Mormon Sondheim, very, very famous.

00:58:00.000 In the Book of Mormon, they have Genghis Khan, Hitler, Jeffrey Dahmer, and Johnny Cochran appear during a song set in hell.

00:58:09.000 They also have a general.

00:58:10.000 I can't remember his name.

00:58:11.000 Do you remember his name, Blake?

00:58:12.000 General, I can't say his name because this is merely a PG-13 show, not an R-rated one.

00:58:19.000 Breaking Inside Scoop from our friend Grant Stinchfield.

00:58:22.000 Trump will endorse Senator John Cornyn over Texas AG Ken Prince.

00:58:26.000 I feel like that's a good idea.

00:58:26.000 That's barely breaking.

00:58:28.000 And there's a video to the Save America Act.

00:58:31.000 So are we getting the Save Act?

00:58:33.000 Apparently.

00:58:35.000 That's a thought crime.

00:58:36.000 Is it worth having Cornyn in the Senate for six more years if you get the Save America Act?

00:58:41.000 So is the Save Act and the Save America?

00:58:44.000 Is that part of the scoop?

00:58:46.000 Yeah.

00:58:47.000 Is it?

00:58:48.000 I kind of wonder because.

00:58:49.000 Paxton's been promised a very big position within the Trump administration.

00:58:53.000 Cornyn's going to agree to pass the Save America app.

00:58:57.000 Does that mean we're getting rid of the filibuster?

00:59:00.000 It could mean that we're getting rid of Pam Bondi.

00:59:02.000 Oh, boy.

00:59:03.000 I mean, that'll be a fun confirmation fight, too.

00:59:06.000 Oh, there's so much exciting things that can happen.

00:59:08.000 Well, I would assume I don't think Bondi goes anywhere.

00:59:11.000 I mean, our chat is not enjoying this news, by the way.

00:59:14.000 Yeah, I'm just, listen, this is from Grant Stitchfield.

00:59:18.000 I'm not saying it's true.

00:59:19.000 I'm saying he's saying it's an inside scoop.

00:59:21.000 Wouldn't that mean that we have to end the filibuster then?

00:59:23.000 Because they're not going to be standing.

00:59:25.000 I don't know what it would mean.

00:59:26.000 Maybe they'd be willing to do it finally just for this.

00:59:28.000 I mean, it does strike me as the sort of thing they might promise them where they'll say, well, now he's on board, but we can't do it because this other senator.

00:59:35.000 Well, you'd have to get it.

00:59:36.000 Yeah, I mean, if they're smart, they would say, listen, we need McConnell on board.

00:59:40.000 We need Susan Collins on board.

00:59:41.000 We need Lisa.

00:59:43.000 Because I guarantee you, those senators want Cornyn to stick around.

00:59:47.000 They don't want another bulldog like Paxton.

00:59:49.000 Now, is it worth passing the Save Act?

00:59:52.000 I know a lot of, I mean, one of my thought crimes is I know a lot of people are very invested in it.

00:59:57.000 I don't know that that act is, if I was going to say if I needed one piece of legislation that I could repeal the filibuster pass, I don't know that it would be that one.

01:00:05.000 You know what mine would be?

01:00:06.000 Immigration reform?

01:00:07.000 I'd take the annual green cards down from 1.2 million to about 0.2, which is about net zero immigration.

01:00:07.000 Oh, yeah.

01:00:07.000 Yeah.

01:00:15.000 And I'd change them all to like genius visas.

01:00:17.000 Yeah.

01:00:18.000 Genius visas and gold visas.

01:00:19.000 You know, it turns out this whole Trump thing where he's like, you have to have $5 million net worth and you get a gold visa or whatever.

01:00:25.000 You have to invest.

01:00:26.000 Turns out a lot of countries have that and they're very successful.

01:00:29.000 So I'm open-minded to that.

01:00:31.000 The problem with ours, though, is historically with the EB5 program, the investments always end up kind of being like scams.

01:00:39.000 Yeah.

01:00:39.000 So like the Chinese investors get their green cards and the jobs and projects never materialize.

01:00:46.000 No, you're totally right.

01:00:47.000 It would have to be actually stringently enforced.

01:00:49.000 But here's the benefit.

01:00:50.000 If you drop the number down of total green cards, then you'd actually be able to.

01:00:54.000 Well, Andrew, if we had real senators who actually showed up to work, we could get more than one thing done, too, if we passed the filibuster.

01:01:01.000 Yeah, well, if we didn't have a fake and gay senate, then it would be actually something we could do.

01:01:06.000 But none of them actually show up to work.

01:01:06.000 Yeah.

01:01:09.000 Yeah.

01:01:10.000 I mean, the whole thing, Blake has a great take on this, that the most positive upside of nuking the filibuster is that Congress would actually have to do work.

01:01:18.000 Yeah.

01:01:19.000 And it'll be tough because this is why.

01:01:22.000 I feel like you kind of want to have the Democrats break it because one, there'll be some.

01:01:26.000 We don't have the breaks, right?

01:01:27.000 Be some criticism of Utah.

01:01:29.000 This guy's a fool, too.

01:01:31.000 And like, there will be some backlash against the party that does it.

01:01:34.000 It'll take them time to do it.

01:01:35.000 We seem to constantly be oscillating back and forth.

01:01:37.000 You don't want to be breaking the filibuster to pass one bill only three months before likely losing the ability to pass.

01:01:45.000 Here's the deal: I've been told very affirmatively that really the way to do this will not impact the midterms.

01:01:52.000 If you want the Save Act passed, you got to include it in the reconciliation bill in September, and then it won't be, it will be ready for the presidential election 28, but it's not going to be ready before then.

01:02:04.000 The other thing they should include in this, I don't know if there's a way to do it in reconciliation, redo the damn census.

01:02:09.000 The thing is, box.

01:02:10.000 No, they can do it before the president has the power to call for it.

01:02:13.000 In theory.

01:02:15.000 The Commerce Department, yeah, could call for it, but then you need to fund it.

01:02:18.000 And the question is, how do you fund it?

01:02:20.000 I mean, listen, where there's a will, there's a way.

01:02:22.000 That's the way Democratic republics should work in theory.

01:02:22.000 I believe that.

01:02:26.000 I don't know.

01:02:28.000 They're just trying to derail us.

01:02:29.000 Well, also, the problem with letting the Democrats do it first is they're just going to call for amnesty.

01:02:33.000 Well, they're going to call for amnesty.

01:02:34.000 They're going to make Puerto Rico a state.

01:02:37.000 And then they're going to pack the Supreme Court.

01:02:39.000 So then, waiting to get back in power by letting them do it first doesn't really matter anyways, because they would have already.

01:02:45.000 Why don't we match their state-for-state thing and basically turn eastern Washington into a state?

01:02:51.000 Why don't we turn uh eastern Oregon into?

01:02:53.000 Well, you do to dismember states, to do dismember states, it cannot be done without the permission of that state.

01:02:59.000 So you'd have to be cutting pieces off a state that agrees to this.

01:03:01.000 All right.

01:03:01.000 Well then, break up uh Republican states into two.

01:03:04.000 I think at the point where we're creating new states by splitting states in half i'm just gonna say it we are at.

01:03:10.000 We are at the point of just national death spiral.

01:03:12.000 We're at we might as well just fight a civil war.

01:03:14.000 Yeah no I, I don't disagree.

01:03:16.000 Uh, I think, I think more likely, it'll be funny for them to start trying to make Puerto Rico a state and then they'll just confront, what a disaster, what a disaster piece Puerto Rico is as an entity.

01:03:28.000 Yeah, Puerto Rico.

01:03:30.000 Oh, we have that on stamp.

01:03:31.000 I guess we have a floating pile of garbage.

01:03:31.000 I guess we do.

01:03:34.000 That was the line.

01:03:35.000 What, the floating pile of garbage?

01:03:37.000 That was the line.

01:03:38.000 I guess.

01:03:38.000 What we could do, what we could disavow is, we could disavow, we could use that, we could get rid of the filibuster and we could impose independence on Puerto Rico.

01:03:48.000 Preempt them, preempt them.

01:03:50.000 Now he's thinking aside, we just give the presidency to some independent for our Caribbean operation.

01:03:55.000 So it makes sense.

01:03:56.000 We have a lot of naval um, a lot of naval infrastructure down there.

01:04:00.000 Well, we just have to lease that piece of land, like we do with Guantanamo Bay.

01:04:03.000 Here's the other part we could do and I saw this floated in an article.

01:04:07.000 Uh so, based on the history of how Dc was laid out, do you know that the original map was stretched much further into northern Virginia?

01:04:17.000 Yeah, so it used to be square.

01:04:18.000 Yeah, exactly.

01:04:19.000 So point is, you could capture back something like 600,000 or 500,000 northern Virginians and put them back in the District Of Columbia, apparently by presidential edict.

01:04:31.000 That's what they claim.

01:04:33.000 I know, I know, I know.

01:04:34.000 I'm just saying, if you're gonna, if you're, if you're preempting their preemption right, if you're getting ahead of this, you make Puerto Rico independent you, you permanently lease the the, the naval facility there.

01:04:46.000 Then you grant back the land in northern Virginia, so you make Virginia essentially a red state.

01:04:51.000 Then, by giving all the Dems back to DC and a couple, and then you do the immigration thing.

01:04:58.000 Those are the things you really didn't say that yeah it's it's, those would be.

01:05:01.000 Those would be preemptive measures to block their ability to really do.

01:05:04.000 It's tough, it would be interesting.

01:05:05.000 Just a side effect of creating a real congress is it would be hard to know exactly what would unfold, because people have gotten so used to voting with a congress that's fake.

01:05:17.000 So you'd probably you'd probably in the end end up have getting more moderates in Congress, because people would get a little more spooked by the promises people make.

01:05:25.000 Because we're so large swings like you want to vote for people like these days, people are voting for these absolute fire breathers, in part because I think deep down they know that nothing is ever getting passed by this congress.

01:05:37.000 That's my gut feeling.

01:05:38.000 I don't know about that.

01:05:40.000 Maybe not though, like in, I guess.

01:05:42.000 To go the other way, in the, I guess I would say in the Uk they have a lot of squishes in parties and in in the Uk they do have total, absolute sovereignty.

01:05:51.000 Of parliament can pass whatever it wants at any time and there's definitely no filibuster, and you always have majority control, because that's what decides who is the prime minister yeah, and as a result, you seem to perpetually have a bunch of squishes in the House OF Commons.

01:06:05.000 Yeah interesting, and I think I think you see that in a lot of different ways.

01:06:08.000 I think the you might be right in the long term, but in the short run we've got this muscle memory built up for fire breathers and we want them.

01:06:14.000 I mean, this is the whole point of like it's dumb for Trump to back Corny when you have Paxton sitting there, who's proven he can win a statewide race by 10 points.

01:06:24.000 By the way, not saying he would repeat that maybe it'd be closer certainly, because that was a wavier a little bit, with Trump winning, but anyways well, and also, if I mean the grassroots is upset about yeah, the grassroots may not even show up, though also, in the process, this is what i'm worried about you take everything good off the board and you think you're going to energize the base, like you have another The thing coming.

01:06:45.000 Like, you have to give the grassroots its due.

01:06:47.000 You have to give them out.

01:06:48.000 Especially when the turnout was already going to be low.

01:06:51.000 So now you just pick him again.

01:06:53.000 I fully believe that.

01:06:54.000 I think there's been a lot of press.

01:06:56.000 I think the thing that turns turnout out is press.

01:06:58.000 Just people talking about it.

01:07:00.000 Talrico, the drama, like it's going to turn out people.

01:07:03.000 Yeah, but you got to figure that if the grassroots, keep in mind, Cornyn's a guy who was booed off of the stage at the NRA convention in Texas just a couple years ago.

01:07:13.000 So if the grassroots aren't fired up for this guy, just because he gets the endorsement, right, as powerful as it is, that doesn't mean you're going to get the same level of turnout.

01:07:25.000 And then this is a race we know where the Democrats are going to put a ton of money into.

01:07:32.000 We just know they're going to.

01:07:33.000 They're going to look at flipping a seat.

01:07:35.000 And I got interviewed by this New York Times reporter, real seasoned political reporter, because I was tweeting up a storm yesterday about Talrico.

01:07:44.000 And she kept, you could tell what she was really driving at.

01:07:46.000 She's like, do you think this poses a more serious danger to the Republican Party when you have an evangelical that kind of presents the way he does?

01:07:54.000 And my take on it is, you know, maybe in the context of Texas, he'll fool some like normie middle-of-the-road road people.

01:08:01.000 But like, if you're a real Christian, a real evangelical, like steeped in the culture of evangelicalism, the big mega churches in Texas, this guy makes your skin crawl.

01:08:12.000 Because it's like this fake religious skin suit that he's wearing, this golly g shucks, like God's non-binary.

01:08:18.000 And it's like, you know, trans abortions and pronouns on your business cars.

01:08:22.000 It's like, no, this guy, this guy will animate the base in a massive way.

01:08:29.000 So I actually think Talrico is so hateable that he's going to animate a big turnout.

01:08:34.000 But you're right.

01:08:35.000 Cornyn is not going to animate a big turnout.

01:08:37.000 I think Texas is different than a lot of states.

01:08:39.000 Like, Texas has its own identity.

01:08:41.000 Texas has its own gravitational pool, you know?

01:08:44.000 And I think Trump's endorsement is only going to carry so far.

01:08:47.000 It is very similar, though, to Warnock and the fake Christian act that they pulled there in 2020 or in the 2021 runoff there, too.

01:08:55.000 They got him to become a senator.

01:08:57.000 A lot of people stayed home after 2020 and it's with the and then independents either voted for him and fell for that or just didn't vote at all.

01:09:05.000 Yeah, well, interesting.

01:09:08.000 Mike Pompeo has also just endorsed John Cornyn, too.

01:09:11.000 Oh, of course.

01:09:12.000 The dominoes are falling.

01:09:13.000 All right.

01:09:13.000 Yeah.

01:09:15.000 Listen, politics is the art of the possible.

01:09:18.000 You don't get everything you want.

01:09:19.000 It's important to say that.

01:09:20.000 You know, we were looking at that one clip, Blake, where some caller called in.

01:09:26.000 Jack, you'll appreciate this.

01:09:28.000 It was an email we got.

01:09:29.000 You read it to Charlie.

01:09:31.000 And maybe I just saw it.

01:09:32.000 Maybe you didn't see this clip.

01:09:34.000 But the email said, I regret voting for President Trump.

01:09:38.000 This was, you know, 2025, early 2025.

01:09:42.000 And Charlie just immediately said, be careful when you say that.

01:09:45.000 We have the clip.

01:09:46.000 I think we do.

01:09:47.000 Let me see.

01:09:48.000 All right, if you have the clip.

01:09:49.000 And I, you know, it's moments like this where you got to remember that President Trump has been an absolute fighter for the grassroots.

01:09:56.000 He doesn't get everything right.

01:09:57.000 And it's moments like this that are fine.

01:09:58.000 491.

01:09:59.000 Yeah, 491.

01:10:00.000 We have 491.

01:10:02.000 Joe Spinella, $5.

01:10:03.000 I regret my vote.

01:10:04.000 Voted Trump 162024.

01:10:07.000 Let me just pause.

01:10:08.000 We're almost done.

01:10:09.000 Well, no, no, I want to pause.

01:10:10.000 Be careful with that statement.

01:10:11.000 Who is his name?

01:10:11.000 What's his name?

01:10:12.000 Joe.

01:10:13.000 Joe, because if all of a sudden the economy's booming in December and we're getting spending cuts and the border's secure and we're on Project 10 million, be careful just saying you regret it.

01:10:21.000 If this just might be one night you don't like, just be careful with such a statement like that.

01:10:26.000 That was pretty strong sell, Blake.

01:10:29.000 Yeah.

01:10:30.000 Had no hair upon my face.

01:10:35.000 Jack, you are an avatar for many in the MAGA movement.

01:10:40.000 Reflect on what Charlie said there.

01:10:42.000 Yeah, I get what Charlie's saying.

01:10:43.000 Charlie saying, let him cook.

01:10:44.000 Charlie saying, let the man cook.

01:10:46.000 Let the man that we entrusted with our vote, the man who rose up at Butler, Pennsylvania to his feet and roared like a lion, the man who we put all of our hopes and dreams into in 2024, let him cook.

01:11:02.000 All right.

01:11:02.000 Literally, just let him cook.

01:11:04.000 And you don't always know what the end game is going to be with President Trump because he operates from a level of strategic ambiguity.

01:11:14.000 He uses strategic ambiguity to his benefit.

01:11:17.000 I mean, you might go to sleep on Friday and wake up and find that we've arrested the president of Venezuela, right?

01:11:23.000 Without any question about that.

01:11:25.000 It was a little bit of a surprise.

01:11:26.000 It's just something where I think what Charlie's saying is, you know, wait until you see the results.

01:11:32.000 Wait until you see the results.

01:11:33.000 Here's where I go back.

01:11:34.000 I fall back on the fact that Democrats are simply unacceptable.

01:11:39.000 And so, yeah, we need to keep the fire on.

01:11:41.000 We need to keep the pressure on.

01:11:43.000 Senator Mark Wayne Mullen is a personal friend of mine, but he's now going to be in charge of DHS.

01:11:47.000 I will absolutely light him up with a billion texts if he starts, you know, getting soft.

01:11:55.000 And so you keep the pressure on.

01:11:59.000 But listen, here's, let me just preview what's going to happen here.

01:12:03.000 They're going to put negotiating pieces on the table at DHS to get Sanctuary Cities to fall in line.

01:12:10.000 The question is, what do you put on the table to get that done?

01:12:15.000 Anyways, I'm previewing where this is going to go, and everybody needs to brace for impact.

01:12:21.000 I will say you will get commas, not drama.

01:12:24.000 You know, that was the expression that one of our guests used on the show today.

01:12:28.000 If you get them to hand over the criminal illegals that are just arrested in normal due process, okay?

01:12:34.000 You will get massive results if you get that.

01:12:37.000 So are they going to try and trade amnesty for some?

01:12:40.000 Are they going to try and trade guest workers for some?

01:12:42.000 Are they going to say, hey, we'll leave the peaceful ones alone?

01:12:44.000 Are they going to say DACA recipients get citizenship?

01:12:48.000 Whatever that thing is that they're going to put on the offering block, it's going to be, it could be, you know, I don't know.

01:12:54.000 Just, I'm warning you.

01:12:57.000 But the point is, Democrats are simply unacceptable.

01:13:00.000 We got to keep the pressure on.

01:13:02.000 But like, the reason we're even talking about Somali fraud and $19 billion, the reason we're talking about 20 million illegals flooding the border, the reason we're talking about Catholics getting surveilled, the reason we're talking about J Sixers getting imprisoned, the reason we're talking about all these terrible things is because Democrats.

01:13:18.000 So they're simply unacceptable.

01:13:21.000 As frustrating as the process can be.

01:13:25.000 Hi, folks.

01:13:26.000 Andrew Colvett here.

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01:14:24.000 Last topic.

01:14:24.000 All right.

01:14:26.000 If we want to keep going, I don't know if we have five months.

01:14:28.000 We could do kids in church.

01:14:29.000 Yeah, let's hit kids in church.

01:14:30.000 Already dive into it.

01:14:32.000 We're diving into it.

01:14:33.000 All right, so this is all, this was all sparked.

01:14:36.000 I believe we have the church in Washington.

01:14:40.000 Let's throw that up and let's post David French too.

01:14:43.000 Well, we need the initial prompting.

01:14:45.000 So this is a church in Washington and they publish their loud kids policy.

01:14:50.000 They have four options.

01:14:51.000 Which is at Mount Washington Church.

01:14:53.000 We are committed to transparency and accountability in all matters of church life.

01:14:57.000 The following document outlines our comprehensive procedures regarding loud children in worship.

01:15:02.000 Please consider this your official notice of policy clarification.

01:15:06.000 Effective immediately, if a family is considering visiting Mount Washington Church and they have a loud kid, the following options are available.

01:15:14.000 Option one, the family brings the kid.

01:15:16.000 Option two, the family makes sure that they bring the kid.

01:15:20.000 Option three, the family has to see that the kid is brought to church.

01:15:23.000 And option four, the kid is absolutely welcome and respected.

01:15:27.000 So this went viral, of course.

01:15:28.000 They say policy enacted, no exceptions.

01:15:30.000 They're saying bring your kids in.

01:15:32.000 It doesn't matter how much they scream or puke.

01:15:36.000 The final line was the best.

01:15:37.000 If your child makes noise, you are not bothering us.

01:15:40.000 You are blessing us.

01:15:42.000 So there were a variety of responses to that.

01:15:44.000 That was embraced by a man I feel like we don't hear as much from lately.

01:15:49.000 He's relegated to the children.

01:15:50.000 He was significantly.

01:15:51.000 He popped up a lot during the early Trump days, and he does still exist.

01:15:56.000 And that is David French.

01:15:58.000 And David French strongly endorsed that.

01:16:00.000 He thought that was a great policy for churches to have.

01:16:03.000 But there was also a competing.

01:16:06.000 response tweet from Matt Walsh, a guy a lot of us know.

01:16:10.000 And he said, I don't love it.

01:16:12.000 He says, I'm actually considerably less tolerant of loud kids in public now than I was before I had my own.

01:16:20.000 Your children should not be allowed to disrupt a church service or any other public gathering.

01:16:25.000 If they're being unruly, remove them.

01:16:27.000 If they're old enough to know better, take them out and discipline them.

01:16:31.000 And if they're too young to control themselves, then again, remove them.

01:16:35.000 I've had to do this many times in many situations.

01:16:38.000 It blows my mind when parents just let them just sit there and let their kids totally disrupt and irritate an entire room full of strangers.

01:16:49.000 I don't have any kids, but how do you guys feel about this, Jack and Andrew?

01:16:56.000 Jack's the Catholic guy.

01:16:57.000 Go first.

01:16:58.000 Yeah.

01:16:58.000 Well, I'll go.

01:16:58.000 So, I mean, we look, when your kids are little, that's a time where, you know, like babies and toddlers, each kid, you know, kind of grows out of it at a certain time.

01:17:09.000 They're going to go through that crying stage.

01:17:12.000 And yeah, there are times if the kid's just wailing.

01:17:15.000 You go in the back.

01:17:16.000 You just, you take them in the back, you hang out there till they've calmed down, and then you bring them back.

01:17:22.000 You want them to experience as much as possible.

01:17:24.000 So one thing that we do at church that we've done since we've had kids is that we sit in the very front row or at least as close to the front row as possible so they can see everything that's going on.

01:17:35.000 And we tend to choose churches that have much more going on in terms of what you see, not just stained glass windows, but artwork and more traditional services than sort of like the YMCA with a cross kind of churches, if you know what I mean.

01:17:55.000 And so we want them to be able to see all of that.

01:17:58.000 But at the same time, if your kid's being loud, if your kid's being unruly, then they need to be disciplined.

01:18:04.000 There's no question.

01:18:05.000 And I use a variety of incentives and punishments, right?

01:18:11.000 So, you know, it's the carrot and stick method.

01:18:14.000 But the incentives are, hey, you know, usually what I'll tell the kids is, all right, guys, if you're good in church today, we're going to Wawa.

01:18:22.000 But then if they're not good, I'll sit there and go, is that Wawa behavior?

01:18:27.000 Is that Wawa behavior?

01:18:28.000 And then they'll kind of realize if not.

01:18:30.000 And if they're really bad, guess what?

01:18:32.000 And if they're worse, they go in the back and they get time out.

01:18:32.000 We don't go to Wawa.

01:18:36.000 There's no question.

01:18:36.000 So you have to discipline.

01:18:38.000 So I think there's a, you know, look, I don't want to ever come down on a parent that's, you know, that's got a kid that's not listening.

01:18:47.000 But at the same time, you do have to have like actual, you know, just basic social understanding and social graces when you're out in public, not just in church.

01:18:55.000 Yeah, I sounded off on this and it got like quoted in a few places.

01:18:59.000 You know, it was just like, listen, I'm a father of three.

01:18:59.000 I was surprised.

01:19:02.000 My kids are crazy.

01:19:04.000 They're really good kids, pretty well behaved when we give them, like when we prep them, but they're loud.

01:19:10.000 Like we have energetic kids.

01:19:12.000 I actually think, Jack, your kids, from what I've gathered, are better behaved in public than mine.

01:19:18.000 So like there's zero judgment here coming from me.

01:19:22.000 But the thing is, there is a big difference between, you know, fostering a reasonable tolerance for families and that kids are going to cry and they're going to be loud sometimes versus just embracing and endorsing absolute chaos and disruption.

01:19:38.000 Mixed places.

01:19:39.000 We're talking restaurants, movie theaters, churches.

01:19:43.000 Kids should absolutely be on their best behavior.

01:19:46.000 And I totally agree with Walsh.

01:19:48.000 If they're not, you remove them.

01:19:50.000 And by the way, we have a whole deal with our kids.

01:19:52.000 It's like, if you guys don't shape up, you get a warning, we'll just leave.

01:19:56.000 And yeah, it's embarrassing for the whole family.

01:19:58.000 We'll leave.

01:19:59.000 We'll say, sorry, I got to go.

01:20:00.000 Our kids are monsters right now.

01:20:02.000 And we got to leave.

01:20:03.000 So I think, and by the way, once you do that once or twice, the kids figure it out and they stop acting up.

01:20:09.000 And as soon as you give them that warning, they'll usually simmer down.

01:20:12.000 And this is the other thing.

01:20:14.000 I'm all about having like context for kids to participate in church life and in the mix, not just in kids' church or childcare or whatever.

01:20:23.000 But it's like, you know, they have to be respectful.

01:20:27.000 And then if they don't prove that they can be respectful, again, you remove them.

01:20:30.000 So yeah, I think this is just like, this feels like a woke liberal church that French would go to.

01:20:37.000 I don't know if it is a woke liberal church or not.

01:20:39.000 I don't know.

01:20:40.000 I think you would commonly see this in, I think it's a way of saying like, oh, we're pro-family.

01:20:47.000 We're pro.

01:20:49.000 It's kind of aligns with pro-life stuff to be like super pro-baby in all contexts.

01:20:53.000 I think it's probably a misguided impulse overall.

01:20:56.000 That's what I'm saying.

01:20:57.000 I don't think it's a big deal either way.

01:20:59.000 I think one thing that is interesting is there's probably an aspect of maybe low church versus high church there or something.

01:21:06.000 Yeah.

01:21:07.000 Like there should generally be a degree of solemnity to a lot of religious services.

01:21:12.000 And if you're just letting a kid scream, it does disrupt solemnity.

01:21:16.000 There should be an element of the sacred.

01:21:19.000 This is what I think.

01:21:20.000 If you don't care about young kids disrupting your church service, you don't have a high regard for what your pastor's preaching or the word of God or the homily or whatever.

01:21:28.000 Yeah, that's what I would say.

01:21:29.000 put it another way it's for example would you want a kid screaming as loud as possible during a wedding during a funeral during your favorite movie and for a lot of parishes you should review you should view a weekly religious service i mean certainly if you're a catholic at a mass and orthodox at a mass uh you should see that as similarly sacred actually to a funeral or a wedding i agree jack you were about to chime in No, of course.

01:21:56.000 I was just going to say, you know, when you talk about in when you go to Latin Mass, it's, I mean, you see so many kids there because there's so many young couples these days.

01:22:07.000 And, you know, kids are all over the place.

01:22:10.000 However, when church starts, they stay in the back if they're, you know, below a certain age.

01:22:15.000 If they're below the age of being able to control themselves, then they hang out in back with mom.

01:22:19.000 And there's, you know, it's just totally.

01:22:21.000 It's totally magical.

01:22:22.000 It's common sense.

01:22:23.000 Foz says, should be more sacred than a movie theater.

01:22:26.000 That's my point.

01:22:27.000 Most of these people that wrote this letter would get more upset if these young kids were allowed during their trip to the movies and a date night than they would if they interrupted their church service.

01:22:38.000 Yeah, probably.

01:22:40.000 Blake.

01:22:41.000 I don't know.

01:22:41.000 I don't have any kids.

01:22:42.000 I don't have a super strong investment in this.

01:22:44.000 Blake is really loud during movies, though.

01:22:47.000 I remember whenever I'm in town and there's a new Tyler Perry out, Blake is always demanding that we go see it, especially the Medea series.

01:22:54.000 He's never missed a single one opening night, by the way.

01:22:57.000 And he's just constantly screaming.

01:22:59.000 Jack, you know that's not true because you know I make sure to never travel when there's a new Madea movie coming out.

01:23:04.000 That's what I'm saying.

01:23:05.000 I'm in town when I'm in town.

01:23:07.000 I would never let you, I would never, I wouldn't want to be hosting you when I could be going to a Medea movie.

01:23:13.000 Don't go in there.

01:23:15.000 Don't open that door.

01:23:15.000 Don't go in.

01:23:17.000 Blake, you're really excited for Scary Movie Six, too, right?

01:23:20.000 Scary movies.

01:23:21.000 They're up to six of them.

01:23:22.000 I can't believe those are still going.

01:23:23.000 I'm completely.

01:23:25.000 We have something scary loaded, though.

01:23:27.000 Wait, wait, scary movies.

01:23:29.000 We have something terrifying.

01:23:31.000 I think this, here's the poster for Scary Movie Six.

01:23:37.000 The Strong Cell is fully kicked in.

01:23:42.000 Strongcell.com.

01:23:44.000 90-day risk-free money-back guarantee.

01:23:46.000 You too could have Blake or his hair as good as Blake.

01:23:50.000 Oh, my goodness.

01:23:52.000 Yeah.

01:23:53.000 It's funny if you throw back to that clip of you and Charlie and how like just everything was shaved.

01:23:59.000 Blake, you look like a newborn in that cliff.

01:24:04.000 That's why I'm not allowed to scream in church.

01:24:07.000 It's like the Gerber baby.

01:24:09.000 Was that screaming in church?

01:24:12.000 Blake is.

01:24:15.000 AI could make this happen.

01:24:16.000 You guys are weird.

01:24:17.000 Well, that was fun.

01:24:19.000 Blake.

01:24:20.000 There's some really good things coming out the other day.

01:24:22.000 It was like a baby stand-up comic.

01:24:25.000 And it was hilarious.

01:24:27.000 He's like, so what's the deal with breastfeeding, huh?

01:24:30.000 My food comes from my mom.

01:24:31.000 It's crazy.

01:24:32.000 All right.

01:24:33.000 Before we go here, Jack, we have to.

01:24:36.000 I'm just waiting.

01:24:37.000 Are we sure?

01:24:39.000 It's typing.

01:24:40.000 I'm going to say something.

01:24:40.000 I just want to make it personal information.

01:24:44.000 Hold on, stand by.

01:24:46.000 Oh, wait, one.

01:24:47.000 Waiting.

01:24:48.000 Never mind.

01:24:50.000 I'll do the second part of this.

01:24:51.000 Don't forget daylight savings.

01:24:53.000 It's happening.

01:24:54.000 I want to forget it.

01:24:55.000 Yes.

01:24:55.000 Yeah, us not changing.

01:24:57.000 Luckily, we get to forget it.

01:24:58.000 We don't have to change it.

01:24:59.000 Yeah, but we just don't have to change the time we come to our show.

01:25:02.000 Our show is an hour earlier.

01:25:03.000 Yeah.

01:25:04.000 Which stinks, by the way.

01:25:06.000 I know.

01:25:06.000 It's super lame.

01:25:07.000 An hour earlier does kind of stink for us.

01:25:10.000 So for the record, we should have an understanding.

01:25:13.000 Wait, wait, wait.

01:25:14.000 For people who don't understand that outside of you guys, you guys get affected by daylight savings way more than everybody else because in a way your time doesn't change, but your relationship to the rest of the country changes because Arizona doesn't have daylight savings.

01:25:14.000 You have to explain this.

01:25:31.000 We also don't get as much light at night.

01:25:33.000 It's terrible.

01:25:34.000 Oh, who cares?

01:25:35.000 Okay, hold on.

01:25:36.000 Go back to the Blake Pro 650.

01:25:39.000 So Caboose just goes, Blake looks like he's about to kneel for the national anthem.

01:25:43.000 It's so true.

01:25:44.000 Colin Kaepernick.

01:25:46.000 I think you have the same picnic as him, by the way.

01:25:49.000 I think my friend may have literally just done a Colin Kaepernick me mashup there.

01:25:53.000 Is that what that is?

01:25:54.000 That might literally do that.

01:25:55.000 All right, fine.

01:25:56.000 You have the exact same skin picnic.

01:25:58.000 And we have a big family business announcement.

01:25:58.000 All right.

01:26:02.000 Our boy Russ, who works on Human Events and also on this show.

01:26:07.000 So it's one of Jack's producers.

01:26:09.000 Has gotten engaged.

01:26:12.000 Let's go.

01:26:13.000 Let's go.

01:26:14.000 Congratulations to Russ.

01:26:17.000 You are joining the club of the.

01:26:20.000 Well, almost joining the club.

01:26:21.000 Danny's next.

01:26:23.000 Hopefully, maybe.

01:26:24.000 And then Blake.

01:26:25.000 Yeah, we'll see.

01:26:26.000 Send your emails, freedom at charliekirk.com.

01:26:28.000 If you are.

01:26:29.000 There it is.

01:26:30.000 Congratulations to our guy, Russ.

01:26:33.000 This has been, he's been planning this.

01:26:35.000 He was going to come into work today, and I was like, no, you can't.

01:26:38.000 And, you know, anyways.

01:26:40.000 So that's Russ, one of Jack's producers.

01:26:43.000 He also just became a homeowner.

01:26:46.000 I believe in the last.

01:26:47.000 Let's go.

01:26:49.000 Checking off the boxes.

01:26:50.000 He's living the American dream.

01:26:52.000 Total, total life upgrade for him.

01:26:55.000 House is swank, by the way.

01:26:57.000 He's got to see some of the pictures.

01:26:58.000 Haven't gone and visited myself, but Russ is a great guy.

01:27:02.000 And, you know, I said, just make sure she's not a spy, bro.

01:27:06.000 Just make sure she's not a spy because, you know, that's what always happens around us.

01:27:09.000 What can I say?

01:27:10.000 Oh, man.

01:27:11.000 Hopefully, she's been properly vetted.

01:27:12.000 So, well, there you go.

01:27:14.000 That's it.

01:27:14.000 What a good note to end on.

01:27:16.000 You know?

01:27:17.000 Crying babies.

01:27:19.000 Russ is going to have some soon.

01:27:20.000 Church.

01:27:23.000 And Strong Cell is working to great effect.

01:27:25.000 All right.

01:27:27.000 Jack, you want to take us out?

01:27:28.000 Ladies and gentlemen, as always, go out there and commit more thought crime.

The Charlie Kirk Show - March 07, 2026

THOUGHTCRIME Ep. 117- America First vs America Only? Luigi the Musical? Kids in Church?

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